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Don’t Let Your Car Stall By The Side of The Road: Get Back On The Highway!

Something I have been reminding myself of lately is to just keep moving forward.  It’s so easy to stall in our doubts, our fears, uncertainties, confusion, etc and it’s generally just a waste of our time.  It’s something we distract ourselves with.

It’s sort of like we’re driving down the highway going somewhere exciting and we get off to get gasoline, and then just get lost and distracted.  We forget to get back in the car and get back on the road and keep moving forward.

We go into thought and deliberation rather than action.  Of course we have to think things through, but most of us do it excessively.  We wonder, we fret, we get lost in fantasies about “what if”, we hope things will get better and we get afraid that they won’t.

And sometimes what is necessary is to just take the car and get back on the highway.  Don’t get lost in some small town at a random exit.  Don’t get distracted thumbing through the magazines at the truck stop.  Get back in the car and get moving.

Most of us don’t because we’re afraid we’ll go in the wrong direction, make the wrong choice.   Or we’re afraid it won’t work out – we’re afraid we might not make it to the destination so we hesitate to even try.  We want some sort of guarantee that it will work in our favor.

Again, the point of this is to just keep moving forward.  Ask yourself, “what is the next step I can take right now?”  The next, single small step?  That’s it.  That’s all you have to figure out.  What is the next single, small step you can take moving forward?

It may not feel comfortable or entirely “right” – in fact often that’s a given.  But here’s the other thing we often forget: you can handle anything that comes at you.  it may not be easy, but you will be able to handle it.  If you have to change course, you will change course.  If you keep moving forward you will figure it out.

Remember Frodo from Lord of the Rings?  He was scared sh$%less most of the time, but he just kept moving forward and he fulfilled his deeper purpose.  So think of the deeper purpose in your life that is calling your forward.  Whether it’s to be masterful in the work you do, to provide an amazing life for your children, to find your mate and have a really fulfilling relationship, or to be connected to your “higher power” in a deep meaningful way, find that deeper purpose and tie it around your neck as a reminder like Frodo did with the ring.

And then keep moving forward.

I’m just throwing this idea out there.  It’s part of a longer post I’m working on that will be coming soon.

Consider this: the real reason you’re not losing weight is because it isn’t your priority yet.  You can think about it all you want.  You want read all the books you want, join all the online forums you want, but at the end of the day, the only reason you aren’t living comfortably and happily at your ideal weight is because it is not your priority.

You don’t lose weight because the chocolate mousse that was served at your sister’s dinner party over the weekend was more important to you than losing weight.

Eating the great pizza, chips, dips and Margaritas your neighbors served while you were watching the World Series together was more important than to you than losing weight.

You don’t lose the weight because nibbling on all the cookies and candy in the office kitchen is more important to you than losing the weight.

This is a matter of priorities.  It’s about DECIDING that to carry this extra weight is no longer an option in your life.  (The suffix of the word decide – CIDE – means to kill off.  Think suicide, homicide, etc.)  When you truly decide, you are deciding that carrying the extra weight is no longer tolerable.  It’s no longer an option.  That’s when your priorities shift.

But until that happens, be very honest with yourself about where your priorities lie.  Our actions always have more meaning that our thoughts, words and intentions.  It’s important to be grounded in the reality of our choices.  That may not always be pleasant, but until we really fess up to our priorities, there is little we can do to change them.

Like I said, this is part of a longer article I’m working on, just not there with it yet.  I’d like to be posting here more, but unfortunately, as much as I would like this to be one of my priorities, clearly it isn’t.  My actions always speak louder than my words or intentions.

Often I hear people talking about how much they “need to lose 30 pounds”, or how they really “want to drop 20 pounds”.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how much you want it or need it.  Those things don’t make the difference.  You can want it for years and be at the same starting point.

What ultimately makes the difference is “readiness”.

What do I mean by readiness?  To me, readiness is:

• The decision that this time will be different.
• The willingness to experience some discomfort to get to your goal.
• Acknowledging that what you’ve always done has gotten you where you are now.
• To confront your emotional habits that want to pull you back to your heavy weight.
• The commitment to be the person you really want to be.
• Chopping wood and carrying water- everyday.
• The willingness to do whatever it takes.
• To decide that being overweight is no longer an option (notice that the suffix of ‘decide’ is ‘cide’ or “to kill off”- when you decide, you are killing off other options).
• The willingness to work with your cravings and realizing that they too will pass.
• That you’ll push through the resistance to build new habits…even if it isn’t always fun.
• The willingness to become a different person of sorts.

What do you come up with?  Email me: joshua@joshuawayne.com or comment below and let me know what Readiness means to you.

“Some people sleep until morning. Others know they have to bring the morning.”
Shlomo Carlebach

Love that.  Has me out the door and running in zero seconds flat.

Whoa…that was more than a wee break!  Back from all vacations, work excursions (for the moment) and food tours of Europe and  the Southeastern United States.

I’m getting ready to enter the online video revolution in the next week or so, and plan on uploading gads of stuff here.

Also, in my “wee break”, got a lot of clarifying about how I want to structure my blog in terms of content…a lot of good stuff to come!

On a wee bit of an end of the summer break.  Looking forward to coming back with a bunch of new material in early September…

I have a bunch of new stuff planned:

• expanding on the Motivational Tips series
• launching an e-book on Ending Emotional Eating with my friends over at PEERtrainer.com
• a battery of cool videos on ending emotional eating, finding your center, being the calm in the middle of the storm, deep breathing, smiling, being at your best
• and other charming ideas to create a life of substance and happiness.

So enjoy these dog days of summer, and check back here in early September…or just sign up for my RSS feed (over on the right there) and you’ll be the first to know.  It’s good to be in the know…y’know?

Cheers,

Joshua

I’m starting a series of Weight Loss Motivation Tips.  Why?  Because I was working out in a park in Asheville, NC (great place, check it out) in the steamy heat earlier today, and then walking hither and thither to the river with the dog for a swim…somewhere in the midst of swimming in the heat, humidity and the river the idea occurred to me.

It will be an ongoing series, and I think a lot of them will be rather pithy, but the first few will probably be longer to communicate some basic ideas about Motivation in depth.  I also think over time there will be a lot of them and that they may make a really useful series.  So here goes:

Weight Loss Motivation Tip #1: Towards or Away?

In order to find more motivation in your effort to lose weight and be healthier- be it choosing and sticking with the right foods or getting off the couch to exercise) there is a very fundamental thing you need to understand about yourself:

Are you primarily motivated Towards Pleasure or Away From Pain?

Why is this so important?

Because not all cars are created the same; neither are all people.  Different people are motivated in different ways.

You need to understand where you fall on this continuum when it comes to weight loss and improving your health.  If you want to create a motivational strategy that will work, meaning one that consistently helps you take action in a positive direction, you need to know this about yourself.

So how do you tell if you are motivated Towards Pleasure or Away From Pain? “Meditate” on these questions, meaning read them, take a couple of deep breaths, “go inside” and feel which you respond stronger to.

Do you feel more motivated to make changes in your diet and exercise lifestyle habits when you think about:

Question 1:

a) You’re hiking up a mountain on a sunny day.  You’re heart is beating but you feel great.  The view is awesome, the air is fresh, and you can hear the sound of the wind in the trees.

b)  It’s two years from now, and you still haven’t really made a change.  You’re tummy is getting bigger, and your knees and hips hurt when you get up and move around for more than a few minutes.

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For the fine folks at Technorati:
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How To Make Weight Loss Simple

The ideas I am going to share with you about how to approach weight loss are about how to make it a simple process. Now I know this may sound like one of those phony sounding headlines we all read on the covers of countless magazines about “How to Lose 20 Pounds in 2 Weeks By Eating This One Vegetable” but I assure you what I’m talking about is different (yes, I shudder too when I read those empty promises).

I want to assure that my choice of words is very deliberate. I carefully chose the word “simple” as opposed to “easy”.  My experience is that they are often two very different things, and it’s usually helpful to keep them separate.  But what I want to share with you is an idea I had recently that can give you a simpler way to approach weight loss (and that will hopefully make it easier in the process as well).

Here’s why I think that at it’s core weight loss is really a simple process.  There is only one thing you ever really need to pay attention to, and that is what you do next. That’s it.

Think about that for a second. We make it so complicated and we overwhelm ourselves with all our non-stop thoughts and worries.

• We stress about what we ate yesterday (or even several days ago!) and how it will show up on the scale
• We worry about what we’ll eat tomorrow when we’re out with friends
• We drive ourselves crazy worrying about how we’re ever going to successfully lose the 20 or 30 or 50 or 80 pounds to begin with
• And all the while we’re terrified of the possibility that we won’t and we’ll be dealing with this frustration the rest of our lives!

Whoa!  That’s a lot of thinking!  But in my experience it’s what most of us do.  Do you see how complicated we make it? We get so busy in our heads thinking about all the things we need to do and all the things that can go wrong, and in the process we forget the most important thing of all: the present moment, and that single, simple choice in front of us about what to do next.

Do you get how simple that is?  There is only one decision you actually have to make.  You don’t have to make a decision about what happens 30 minutes from now, or 10 hours from now or 10 days from now.  You just have to decide what to do next.

So let’s take it a step further…

What I want you to realize is that every decision you make is going to lead you in either a positive or a negative direction.  Just two choices here (remember, we’re keeping it simple) and it’s definitely one or the other!

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It’s been a very busy month, hence the lack of blog entries.  My collaboration with the folks at PEERtrainer has greatly expanded in the past month, and I’ve been so busy putting together programs with them that it has left spare time for little else.

In the weeks to come I plan to be a bit more active, with a great deal of new content coming in the new year to be certain.

If you haven’t been listening, PEERtrainer co-founder Jackie Wicks and I have been doing weekly telephone “meetings” that we’ve called “The Holiday Mindset Weight Loss Bootcamp”. 

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